The subject matter disclosed herein relates to wind turbines and, more specifically, to blade tip molds, tip assemblies and methods of manufacturing the same for wind turbine rotor blades.
Wind power can be considered one of the cleanest, most environmentally friendly energy sources presently available, and wind turbines have gained increased attention in this regard. A wind turbine can include a tower, generator, gearbox, nacelle, and one or more rotor blades comprising a composite material. The rotor blades capture kinetic energy from wind using known foil principles and transmit the kinetic energy through rotational energy to turn a shaft coupling the rotor blades to a gearbox, or if a gearbox is not used, directly to the generator. The generator then converts the mechanical energy to electrical energy that may be deployed to a utility grid.
Wind turbines can thus be placed in a variety of locations to effectively help capture the energy of wind power where present. These locations can include both on-shore and off-shore locations and can potentially be located in a wide variety of different topographical and geological positions. However, the specific wind resources available can widely vary by individual locations. Not only may one wind farm experience great winds than another wind farm, but individual wind turbines within a given wind farm may also experience different wind patterns.
To help capture the most amount of energy from a given location, wind turbine rotor blades may be tailor sized based on the expected amount of wind. However, while different sized turbine blades may improve the efficiency of a given wind turbine, creating multiple turbine blades of different lengths can require multiple molds that can similarly be costly and time intensive to produce.
Accordingly, alternative molds, tip assemblies and methods for manufacturing tip assemblies would be welcome in the art.